Sunday, December 28, 2008

Elegant French Buche de Noel

Once again the Daring Bakers have gone to the brink with an over the top dessert for the holidays. Last year it was the cake and buttercream Yule Log, this year it is the very elegant frozen French Yule Log or Buchede Noel.

A frozen Yule Log very reminiscent of an ice cream cake, only often it’s not made of ice cream but rather frozen mousse of some sort. In French this is called an entremets which is sometimes loosely translated in English as simply a cream dessert. This also means that this recipe is not holiday-specific, it is also just a scrumptious dessert recipe. I suspect, after making this dessert, that most French women purchase their frozen Yule Logs for the holidays, but I am very glad that Hilda and Marion chose it for the December challenge and that I made the time to create my own version, full of chocolate and coffee flavors.

These Daring Baker challenges each month are usually each a learning experience.

With six required parts, many flavor choices to make, and the amount of organization required a lot was indeed learned making this Yule Log!

I also learned that Sweetie doesn’t know not to interrupt my concentration as I’m piping chocolate mousse over the coffee crèmebrulee’ just before piping more mousse and laying in the white chocolate buttercrunch crisp layer. Then I learned that sincere apologies are needed after I yelled at him for interrupting me, followed by a great deal of thought about the relative importance of doing the challenge. Even though it turned out to be his all time favorite of the Daring Baker challenges, making it with all of the other stressed of Christmas time might not have been wise.

The good news is that I kept the learning experience going by identifying more stressors and dealing with some of them. So it was actually a good thing that the challenge was made and the mousse was interrupted. Ha hah! Still, sorry Sweetie!

The photo above shows all of the layers and how my slices looked for serving.

Chocolate was the main flavor of my buche, with (first element) dark chocolate icing (I used the milk chocolate recipe but used dark chocolate…don’t care for the cocoa version), (second element) dark chocolate ganache, (third element) almond dacquoise and extra almond dacquoise for décor (photo below shows dacquoise being spread before being baked),

(fourth element) a luscious coffee crèmebrulee’ (simmered some coffee in the heavy cream, then used a fine tea strainer to strain out the coffee grounds. This was my favortie part of the challenge. Photo below.

The next layer was (fifth element) a crisp made using crush cereal,

white chocolate and pulverized buttercrunch candy. If I were to make this again, I would break up the crisp layer because it was too hard to cut…maybe not enough cereal?

The dark chocolate mousse (sixth element) was the most difficult element for me but it was fun to see what the syrup did with the whisk on my KA…almost like cotton candy.

That worried me, but it ended up blending in fine and the mousse was quite delicious.

I decorated the top with dacquoise stars and chocolate covered coffee beans. It made a great dessert for a holiday dinner with friends.

24 comments
:

Wow...life lessons AND baking lessons, what more can you ask for!? :-) Looks great! I love that you made the crisp in white chocolate. Beautiful decorations!!! Glad you hubby liked it...my dad said "Not the most impressive challenge." Oh well! I kind of agreed but didn't really want to hear it! My mom liked it though. Hope you have a wonderful New Year!

Your log looks fabulous! I love the flavours you chose and i wish I had been smart enough to line my creme brulee with foil instead of parchment paper that didnt quite contain the brulee!! LOL! Blessed Christmas to you and yours!

Every time I do that sugar syrup thing in the KA I'm fascinated with the effects ;)Coffee . . . wonderful creme brulee!This time of year seems to bring out all kinds of stresses but it would seem we both stepped up to them very well thank you.Yours is beautiful.

Great step-by-step photos! Yes, the pate a bombe was difficult for me, too, and my cereal layer had too much cereal, but the whole thing tasted amazing. I really like the coffee/chocolate flavor combo that you chose.

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